The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton

  CHAPTER XIII

  We were thirteen long weary days between Apamama Lagoon and Kusaie,whose misty blue outline we hailed with delight when we first sighted itearly one afternoon, forty miles away.

  Calms and light winds had delayed us greatly, for as we crawled furthernorthward, we were reaching the limit of the south-east trades, which,at that time of the year, were very fickle and shifty. Not a single sailof any description had we seen, though we kept a keen lookout night andday; for, after being ten days out from Apamama, I began to feel anxiousabout our position and would have liked to have spoken a ship, fearingthat the current, in such calm weather, would set us so far to thewestward that I should have difficulty in making the island if we oncegot to leeward of it.

  Day after day had passed with the same unvarying monotony--light winds,a calm, then a brisker spell of the dying trades for a few hours, or aday at most--then another calm lasting through the night, and so on.

  But our spirits very seldom flagged, and we contrived to make the timepass somehow. Lucia, whose face and hands were now browning deeply fromcontinuous exposure to the rays of a torrid sun worked with Niabon atdressmaking, for she had brought with her half a dozen bolts of print;and, as they sewed, they would sometimes sing together, whilst I and mytwo trusty men busied ourselves about the boat--scrubbing, scraping andpolishing inside and out, cleaning and oiling our arms; or, when a shoalof bonita came alongside, getting out our lines and catching as many ofthe blue and marbled beauties as would last us for a day or two. But ourchief relaxation, in which the two young women always joined us, was twoor three hours of "sailors' pleasure" i.e., overhauling all our jointpossessions, clothing, trade goods of all sorts, and carefully restowingthem in the boxes in which they were packed.

  Tepi's wound by this time was quite healed--the bullet had gone cleanthrough the fleshy part of his arm, and then struck an oar which waslashed to the rail. He had got a nail from me and drove it through thelead into the wood--to be preserved as a memento of the fight.

  On the evening of the day on which we sighted the blue peaks ofbeautiful Kusaie, the sky began to look ugly to the eastward, and atdaylight it was blowing so hard, with such a dangerous sea, that Idecided not to attempt to enter the weather harbour--Port Lele--thoughthat had been my intention, but to run round to the lee side to CoquilleHarbour, where we could renew our fresh provisions, spell a day or two,and be among friends, for I knew the people of Kusaie pretty well.

  We got into the smooth water of Coquille just in time, for no sooner hadwe dropped anchor at the mouth of a small creek which debouched into theharbour through a number of mangrove islets, than it commenced to blowin real earnest, and terrific rain squalls drenched us through and madeus shiver with cold.

  The natives, however, had seen us, and presently, as soon as the rainceased, three canoes appeared, each manned by five men. They welcomed usvery heartily and urged us to come to the village--which was less thana quarter of a mile away. We were only too delighted to get ashoreagain after thirteen days' confinement on our little craft, so hurriedlypacking a couple of boxes with dry clothing, and some articles forpresents for the people, we put on the cabin hatches, made everythingelse snug on board, and half an hour later were all in the chiefs house,warm and dry, and telling him and his family as much about ourselves aswe thought advisable.

  As soon as it could be cooked, they brought us an ample meal ofhot baked fowls, pigeons, and fish, with a great quantity ofvegetables--taro, yams, breadfruit, and sweet potatoes. The very smellof it, Tepi whispered to me, made his teeth clash together!

  We remained with these hospitable people for four days. There wasnothing that they would not do for us--no trouble was too groat, nolabour was aught but a pleasure to them. They brought the _Lucia_round to a small sandy beach near the village, discharged her, carriedeverything up to the houses, and cleaned her thoroughly inside and out,and then put her in the water again for us. When we bid them farewelland sailed, the boat's deck was covered with baskets of freshly-cookedfood and a profusion of fruit, and Lucia and Niabon were accompaniedon board by every woman and girl in the place, some of whom weptunrestrainedly, and begged them not to venture their lives in such asmall boat, but to remain on the island till a ship touched there, boundto the islands of the further north-west.

  Before finally parting with our kind friends I gave them twenty poundsof tobacco, which, though we had still four hundredweight left, wasstill our most valuable trade article, and would have to be disbursedcarefully in future, and Lucia gave the chief's daughter a very handsomegold ring of Indian manufacture, though at first the girl declinedaccepting so valuable a present.

  A glorious silver moon in the sky 174]

  We lost sight of Kusaie within ten hours, for we had a slashing breeze,which carried us along in great style, and all that night we sat up,none of us caring to sleep, for there was a glorious silver moon in asky of spotless blue, and the sea itself was as a floor of diamonds.

  Niabon and Lucia, I must mention, had insisted on standing watch eversince we had left Apamama, and they certainly helped us a lot, for bothcould now steer very well, and took pleasure in it. The former, withTepi, was in my watch, the latter was with Tematau, who, like allEastern Polynesians, was a good sailor-man and could always be reliedupon.

  We had now sailed over a thousand miles; and every day--every hour Igained more confidence in myself, and the resolution to make one of thegreatest boat voyages across the Pacific had been ever strengtheningin my mind since the day I looked at Chart No. 780 in Krause's house atTaritai.

  What could I not do with such a boat and two such men as Tepi andTematau, after we had landed Lucia and Niabon at Guam in the for north!We would refit the boat, and then turn our faces south once more, andsail back through the Western Carolines on to wild New Guinea--Dutch NewGuinea, and run along the coast till we came to one of the few scatteredDutch settlements on the shores of that _terra incognita_. Tepi andTematau would stick to me--they had sworn to do so--had told me so inwhispers one bright night, as we three kept watch together and Lucia andNiabon slept.

  Niabon! What a strange strange girl she was! I should find it hard tosay goodbye to her, I thought; and then I felt my cheeks flush.

  Say goodbye to her--part from her! Why should we part? Was I so much hersuperior that I need be ashamed of asking her to be my wife? What wasI, anyway, but a broken man--a man whose father, my sole remainingrelative, had nearly twenty years before told me with savage contemptthat I had neither brains, energy, nor courage enough to make my way inthe world, thrown me a cheque for a hundred pounds, and sneeringly toldme to get it cashed at once, else he might repent of having given itto me to squander among the loose people with whom I so constantlyassociated. And I had never seen or heard from him, and never would. ButI had that cheque still, for there always was in me a latent affectionfor the cold-faced, unsympathetic man who had broken my mother's heart,not by open unkindness, but by what the head gardener whisperingly toldme (when she was lying dead, and I, sent for from college to attend thefuneral, went to his cottage to see him) was "silent, inwisible neglect,Master James; silent, inwisible neglect. That's wot killed her." Forthe servants loved my poor mother--their opinion of my father theydiscreetly kept to themselves. So I had kept the cheque, for burningwith resentment against him as I was at the time, I remembered the wordsof my mother's last letter to me, written with her dying hand.

  "Try hard to please him, James. He is very cold and stern, but I am surethat, deep down in his heart, he loves you well."

  That letter, with the cheque inside it, was now yellowed, and thewriting faint, but I had kept them both. I would write to him some day,I had thought, and send him back the cheque, and my mother's letter aswell, and then perhaps the hard old man would forgive me, and write andsay "Come." But the years went by, and I never wrote, and now it was toolate, after fifteen had passed. Very likely he was dead, and had willedhis money to churches or hospitals, or some such charities, and I shouldalways be "
Jim Sherry, the trader," to the end of my days, and never"James Shervinton, Esq., of Moya Woods, Donegal."

  Well, after all, what did it matter? I thought, as I held on to theforestay, and looked at the now paling moon sinking low down on our lee,as the glow of the coming sun tipped a bank of cloud to windward, witha narrow wavering ribbon of shining gold. I had nothing at which togrumble. My fifteen years of wandering had done me good, although I hadnot saved money--money, that in my father's eyes brought, before eternalsalvation in the next world, primarily the beatitudes of some countyeminence in Ireland and British respectability generally in this. Unlessmy father was still alive, and I could know he wanted to see me beforehe died, I should never go home--not after fifteen years of South Sealife.

  Why should I not accept what Fate meant for me, and my own inclinationstold me that I was destined for? I was intended to be "Jim Sherry, thetrader,"--and I should ask "Niabon, of Danger Island," to be"Jim Sherry's" wife. Why not. I had never cared for any woman beforeexcept in a fleeting, and yet degrading manner--in a way which had leftno memories with me that I could look back upon with tender regrets.She and I together might do great things in the South Seas, and founda colony of our own. She had white blood in her veins--of that Ifelt certain--and where Ben Boyd, of the old colonial days, failed toachieve, I, with a woman like Niabon for my wife, could succeed. BenBoyd was a dreamer, a man of wealth and of flocks and herds, in thenewly-founded convict settlement of New South Wales, and his dreamwas the founding of a new state in the Solomon Islands, where he, anautocratic, but beneficent ruler, would reign supreme, and the EnglishGovernment recognise him as a Clive, a Warren Hastings of the SouthernSeas. But the clubs of the murderous Solomon Islanders--the countryof the people in which he had already planned out vast achievements onpaper--battered out his brains almost under the guns of his beautifularmed yacht, the _Wanderer_; and the name of Ben Boyd was now aloneremembered by a decayed village and a ruined lighthouse on the southheadland of Twofold Bay, in New South Wales, where, in the days of hisprosperity, he had erected it, as a guide to the numerous American andEnglish whaleships, which in those times traversed the Pacific from oneend to the other, and would, he imagined, eagerly avail themselves ofthe quiet, landlocked harbour to repair and recruit, and sell theircargoes of sperm oil. But they never came, and his dream was ended erehis life was gone.

  Yes, I would ask her, as soon as I had an opportunity of speaking to heralone. It was true that she had once told me that she would never partfrom Lucia--and Lucia had often spoken to me of their plans for thefuture.

  But, my vanity whispered, she would listen to me She cared for me, I wassure, and would not long hesitate. We were certain to meet with at leastone missionary going through the Carolines, and he would many us. If wedid not, it would not matter--there were half a dozen Spanish priestsin Guam. Then after our marriage I would go on in the boat to Amboyna,where I had a business friend, a rich trader--a man who liked andtrusted me, and who would give me a thousand, ay, two thousand pounds'worth of trade goods for my pencilled I.O.U. in his notebook. Then Iwould buy a little schooner, and sail with Niabon to the islands ofthe south-eastern Pacific, and begin trading. I would make Rapa, inthe Austral Group, my head station, or else Manga Reva in the southernPaumotus--Niabon should decide.

  The low cloud to windward lifted, the red sun leapt from the sea-rim,and then I felt a soft hand on my arm.

  "What are you thinking of, Jim? I called you twice, but you did nothear. I believe you were talking to yourself, for I twice saw you throwout your arm as if you were speaking to some one."

  "I believe I was, Lucia," I replied with a laugh. "I was day-dreaming."

  "Tell me, Jim," she said softly, so softly that her voice sank to awhisper.

  "Not now, Lucia. Wait till we get to the next land." And then in allinnocence I added, as I looked at her, "How bright and happy you look,Lucia! I think you grow more beautiful every day."

  She lifted her eyes to mine for one instant, and I saw in them a light Ihad never seen before.